Here’s how bad an Internet addiction can get. CBS science correspondent Daniel Sieberg was assigned to do a show on swimming with sharks in the Bahamas and as his boat approached them, he sent Facebook alerts with one hand while steadying the boat with the other, then panicked when his Blackberry showed a signal strength of only two bars. When the signal cut out completely, his heart started pounding. He knew he had to keep breathing or could get lung damage, but he had a sudden urge to use his Blackberry underwater.

Instead he wrote a book, “The Digital Diet: The 4-step plan to break your tech addiction and regain balance in your life,” $13 from ThreeRiversPress.com. It has exercises to help you break free and checklists to evaluate how bad your addiction is.

Bob thinks none of this is necessary. There are so many positive benefits to tech; and to be fair, the book also mentions those. There’s the 92 year-old woman who stayed in touch with her granddaughter even from her hospital bed.

And the widely publicized fear of too much time with video games is also way overdone. There are benefits. We just read a University of Medicine & Dentistry report that found playing video games sped recovery from the after-effects of strokes. There are also studies that show playing video games improves children’s analytical and mathematical skills. And then of course, it should help if you want to learn how to operate drones.